


Whispers of Wisteria

by lavender_macaronss



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy Setting (kinda), Fluff, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, I try to be poetic but fail, I try to write angst but it becomes fluff, Kidnapping, L’Manburg, Magic, Minecraft but make it realistic, More tags to be added, Nightmares, Niki-centric, Non-consensual drug use (sort of), Only in chapter four, SBI Family Dynamic, Tommy and Tubbo are best friends (duh), Tubbo has plant magic!, Weird dreams, You can see the niki/will as romantic or platonic, amen, and also a bit after that, ghost!jschlatt, light (?) angst, takes place during the Revolutionary War, there’s a demon lol, too many adjectives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27544336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavender_macaronss/pseuds/lavender_macaronss
Summary: When Niki finds an unconscious boy just outside her bakery, injured and bleeding, she’s barely surprised. This kind of thing happens these days. The boy is a soldier, though he’s younger than her, and she decides that enough is enough. The ruler of the Dream Isles is fighting against children who cannot even cook for themselves, who have no idea what they’re doing.Niki decides that enough is enough, and she joins the Revolution, moving into the White House with the charming young General and his family, but little does she know that there is something else in this house. Something invisible that smells of moonflowers, that puts a song in her head. A song that feels familiar, from a distant memory, but that memory isn’t hers.Something that Wilbur knows about, but won’t explain.(This was renamed from the original title because it was too long)
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone, Jschlatt & Niki | Nihachu, Niki | Nihachu & Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Niki | Nihachu/Wilbur Soot, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 105
Kudos: 278





	1. Toy Soldier’s Revolution

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! The rewritten first chapter of my AU, hope you like it <3

This is a story about people, and also about war. But mostly it’s about people (and also ghosts, but we’ll get to that later) It is a story from a kingdom called the Dream Isles, a large grouping of islands that all fall under the rule of Dream, the king who might be described as a little bit unruly on a good day, or mildly tyrannical on a bad one. This nation is full of many strange things. It is full of demons and ghosts and boys who can become foxes, it is full of magic, magic that can be used in a variety of different ways. There is potion making, which is quite difficult and honestly too much effort, there is botanical magic, which is rare and is said to make you go crazy and talk to plants. There is red stone, which isn’t really magic but it should be. There is wizardry (which is mostly just for show) and there is witchcraft (which makes people think you eat children) and finally, there is a strange, primal magic that lies in the monsters and the creatures and the exorcists, who vanquish said monsters and demons and ghosts alike with the power of something ancient that nobody actually understands. But this is not a story that starts with magic. This is a story that starts with a girl, and with a war.

~~~

  


A girl sits behind the counter of a quaint little bakery in a quaint little town. The doors are open and the scent of icing sugar and fresh macarons wafts out from every window. The early morning sun streams in through the windows, casting its light onto the many colorful boxes on the various shelves of the bakery. Each box is full of handcrafted treats, decorated with such care that each and every intricate detail, each swirl of frosting is absolutely perfect. Every one of the boxes is decorated as well, with pretty pastel ribbons and cute little handwritten labels. There are flowers on every table, neatly arranged bouquets that only make the bakery itself smell sweeter. Behind the counter, the girl fiddles with her brooch, awaiting her customers.

This girl’s name is Nikita Nihachu, though she prefers to be called Niki, and she owns the only bakery in the tiny village of New Mistshire. In fact, she owns the only bakery in all the region, the only others being in the more densely populated areas of the Dream Isles. Niki’s bakery is well known for many reasons, and its status as the only one is only a small part. For one, there’s the food: Niki’s baking is delicious and the decorations she so carefully creates are infamous. Another reason for its success is the ambience, the quiet atmosphere and the relaxing aura of the bakery makes it a popular spot for travelers of all kinds. Lastly, and most notably, is Niki herself. She’s wonderful company and keeps lovely conversation, and she’s been known to offer a free hot chocolate to those in need on a cold night. Niki also just happens to be the closest thing to a doctor that New Mistshire has (the nearest actual doctor is seven towns away). Lately, her medical expertise have become more and more important to the townspeople, likely because of the war raging all over the country. A Revolution had started over in the south, and people were being injured, which had recently become Niki’s problem due to the battles being fought in neighboring towns.

Niki sighs at the thought, she’s never liked conflict, and brushes a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She has shoulder length honey-blonde hair, which is currently tied into a neat little bun at the back of her head, a few strands falling loose to frame her face. Her plain blue dress and crisp white apron aren’t quite pretty on their own, but she makes them look elegant. She is currently placing her earnings of the previous day back into the chest she keeps under the counter. 

The bell rings, signaling that someone has entered, and she pipes up, peering over the counter only to hear a loud thud. She steps away from the counter to see a young boy, likely a few years younger than her, laying sprawled out on her floor. She rushes over and checks his pulse. Alive, but struggling. He’s bleeding from a wound to his side, and Niki carefully pulls him up. She stands up, half-dragging half-carrying the boy upstairs to her guest room. Niki already knows what’s happened to him. She can tell from the uniform and the shiny sword in a sheath on his belt. She wonders whether she’s reacting properly. She should probably be shocked that a bleeding stranger has just collapsed in her home, but these days that sort of thing just happens. In fact, that sort of thing has been happening a lot more frequently.

She wonders how he ended up in this situation, not even eighteen and already a soldier. She shakes her head sadly as she lays him down in the guest bed. Niki grabs her first aid kit from the bedside table, being used to treating strangers in this very room. She gets to work cleaning the wound, likely from a sword slash that he managed to partially dodge, and hums a little tune as she does so. She’s sure he’s going to survive, so she isn’t really stressed about him, having had to deal with worse, you know, amputate a limb or two. When she’s done cleaning the slash, she takes out the sewing kit she always keeps in her apron pocket (“Never be caught dead without yer sewing kit, my girl” her grandmother had told her when she was small, advice that Niki never would forget.)

She stitches the wound closed, and covers it in bandages, and then Niki Nihachu goes back downstairs to do her job.

~~~

That day, she sells several of her treat boxes and fills up a few custom orders as well, and when the day is done she goes back up to check on the boy, only to find him awake. He glares at her, fierce blue eyes meeting gentle hazel ones. She smiles at him, a little uncertainly.

“You’re a bit young to be a soldier.” She says, trying to end the awkward silence

“Everyone says that. I’m not really, there’s kids younger than I am that are fighting as well.” The boy informs her, pouting, ”In fact, I’m the second in command to the General himself!” 

Niki nods cautiously.

“What’s your name then, sir?” She asks, reaching for his bloodstained clothes, which she had left on a chair by the window.

“Tommy. Tommy Innit. How about you, miss?”

He has more manners than she’d been expecting from a boy who looks so messy, so full of little bruises and with such unruly hair.

“Nikita Nihachu. You can call me Niki, if you’d like.”

“That’s a very pretty name, Miss Nihachu...” he pauses momentarily, “My brother will be on his way to fetch me soon, I expect. He’s the general.”

“Are you a revolutionary?” Niki asks, as she gathers up the uniform, notcing the navy blue coat.

“Yes, Miss. What are you, Miss, if I may ask?”

“I’m a baker. And a doctor sometimes.”

There is silence for a beat, and then Tommy speaks.

“Are you married?” He asks and Niki finds herself quite flustered, feeling her cheeks heat up.

“No. I-I’m not quite the type of woman that men would like to marry..” She answers truthfully, deciding that he’s just a boy who asked her an honest question.

“...My brother isn’t married either. His name is Wilbur...He’s the general, you know. Perhaps you could marry him.”

Niki laughs, giggling at the boy’s bluntness.

“I don’t think so. I’m probably not his type...”

~~~

In the end, Tommy stays the night at her bakery, politely thanking her for letting him stay as he devours the rather simple soup she had cooked him.

“Do you not get food in the army?”

He glances up at her, his mouth still full of soup

“Not really. We don’t know how to cook.” He admits, shame etched into his features. Niki nods.

“Do you know how to clean your own clothes?”

Tommy shakes his head, embarrassed.

“How about a doctor? Anyone that heals your wounds.”

“...Not really. We’ve got Tubbo. He makes herbal tea...”

“...Do you even have a house?” Niki asks, genuine concern in her voice

He scoffs at her, insulted by the question “Of course we do!”, he insists, “We live in the White House!”

“But you don’t have anyone to cook or clean, and you don’t have a doctor?” She poses.

“Er...No. We usually just eat carrots.”

Niki shakes her head, realizing just how bad it must be in L’Manburg.

“That’s settled then,” She says, “I’ll be taking you back to the White House, and I’ll help you sort that out.”

Tommy stares at her, disbelief in his eyes.

“You’ll what?” He asks, unable to believe her.

“I’ll help your army.” She promises.

~~~

Niki lets Tommy stay in her home for a few days, making sure to write a letter to his brother, who is in fact, actually the general.

_Dearest General Soot,_

_Your brother (Tommy Innit) turned up at my bakery two days ago, bleeding from a wound he sustained during battle. Over these two days, he has explained to me that your army has no cooking experience, no cleaning ability and don’t even have a doctor! I tell you, General Soot, I was quite shocked. I have also discovered that the White House he speaks of is only a day’s journey from the village of New Mistshire, where I am currently living, and have decided that once Tommy is well enough, I shall bring him to you. I have also decided to assist you in your efforts to stop Dream._

_Yours respectfully,_

_Nikita Nihachu_

She sends the letter to the White House, and the next day a response arrives

_Dearest Miss Nihachu,_

_I thank you for finding my young brother, and apologize for any inconvenience he may have caused you. Your offer of assistance is much appreciated, and if you would be so kind, L’Manburg would love to have your help. Please keep me updated on Tommy’s condition, and thank you once again_

_Kindest regards,_

_General Wilbur Soot_

It’s a rather short letter, but Niki doesn’t mind. She continues sending them to him, and he continues to respond, until after a week, Tommy is well enough to travel.

~~~

On the day that Niki is set to leave with Tommy, she stands in front of the mirror in her bedroom. She looks herself up and down, smoothing out her wavy curls and adjusting her light blue skirt. She is wearing a pale blue dress that was once, many years ago, a bright royal blue. It was her grandmother’s, and then her mothers and then it belonged to so many sisters and now it was hers. Although it was faded and old, she quite liked it. She liked to think it made her look like her grandmother. Niki’s grandmother has been a very...sturdy woman. She had dealt with ten sons and four daughters, and had been a doctor for forty years until she died. Niki remembered her fondly, a tall woman with a hunched back who spent all her time doing things that women didn’t typically do. Like wear trousers under her dress, or swear at her sons. Her grandmother had called her “my girl” and had showed her how to clean a sword wound and how to hold a very nice funeral. She wears the old pale blue dress with pride, and with the addition of a pair of sturdy boots it’s a good outfit for walking. She puts on a hat, the ladylike thing to do, and grabs her luggage.

When she arrives downstairs Tommy is waiting for her, his injury is fully healed and his clothes are crisp and clean, a noteworthy improvement from when she first met him. She smiles at him.

“Are you excited to see your brother again?” She asks, politely

“Oh yes, I missed him quite a bit- don’t tell him I said that.”

She stifles a quiet laugh with a cough. 

On her way out,she locks the door of the bakery, and stops by her neighbor’s house to remind Mrs Perspicacity to water her flowers. When they finish talking to her, Niki gives the old widow a friendly wave and then she and Tommy are off.

~~~

And so, that is how Niki found herself outside the White House, which is much larger than she’s expected based on what Tommy had told her about the conditions in L’Manburg. It was a massive white building, in the center of the city. The walls around it were smaller than those around L’Manburg itself, but they were no less intimidating, made of the same big black stone that protected the whole city. She stands for a moment simply gazing up at the structure, but then Tommy is shouting at her to hurry up as he runs up to the gate.

Two figures are waiting for them there, one of them a short boy that looks to be Tommy’s age, wearing the same uniform as everyone in the army. Next to him is the famous young General. The youngest military leader in the world, with fluffy brown hair and a face that is much more...delicate, prettier than Niki had expected. He is tall, much taller than anyone else she’s met, and he’s wearing little round glasses. He smiles when he sees Tommy, who tackles the short boy with the brown hair into a hug, knocking him over so that they both land in the mud. Niki laughs at the sight, and walks up to the General.

“Miss Nihachu, I presume?” He says, when she’s close enough to talk to.

“General Soot. It’s a pleasure to properly meet you.” She says, and sticks out her hand. She’s expecting him to shake it, but he instead takes it in his hand and brings his lips to her knuckles. Niki blushes - something she doesn’t often do - and looks to the side in hopes that he doesn’t notice her flustered state. He pulls away and smiles at her kindly.

“The pleasure is all mine, Miss. I cannot thank you enough for what you did for my brother.” On the last word he turns to glare at his brother, who is already covered in dust and is rather violently ruffling the short boy next to him’s hair. “Tommy.” He says, in a tone that makes Niki think of her older brothers.

“Right!”, Tommy says, suddenly looking much more formal, and quite a bit more flustered, “Er..Thank you s-so much, Miss Nihachu...Sorry for intruding into your, uhm, home.”

Niki smiles “Oh it was no bother, I’m used to taking care of strangers...Besides, I’m happy to help!” 

General Soot nods at his little brother, then turns to the other boy.

“Introduction” he whispers aside to the other boy.

“Oh! Right! Hello, Miss, my name’s Tubbo. I’m the resident...well I suppose you could call me a botanist...” he sticks out his hand in one awkward, stiff movement and Niki gently takes it, shaking it lightly.

“Really, I’d much prefer it if you all called me Niki, we are going to be working together after all. And besides, I’d like for us to be friends.”

The two younger boys nod, so frantically that Niki has to wonder how they aren’t dizzy.

“If we call you by your first name, it would only be right for you to call us by ours. So please, no more “General Soot”, from now on I’m just Wilbur.” The young man says, fixing her with a smirk. His eyes are tired, she notes, and though he is quite muscular (not that she was looking at his muscles or anything!) he’s also quite thin.

“Now then,” Niki says, “I’d like to meet the rest of your “elite soldiers”, Genera- Wilbur.”

Niki is lead into the White House, and it’s interior is just as incredible as the exterior, full of expensive furniture, however, it’s incredibly dusty, a fact that Wilbur keeps apologizing for. She has to tell him that it’s fine several times throughout the tour. Then, she is introduced to a man named Eret, whose voice is surprisingly deep, so surprising, in fact, that Niki spits out the water that Wilbur had given her when he showed her the kitchen when Eret first introduces himself. 

Then she is shown the bedrooms, of which there are many (more than twenty!) and soon she finds herself in a study. There is a boy there, no older than twelve, with wavy red hair and a distinctly animalistic look in his eyes. His teeth are sharp, something that Niki notices when he tells her his name (which is Fundy). He tells her that he’s Wilbur’s adopted son, which only makes her like the young General more. He seems kind, kind enough to adopt a child he found wandering about in the forest, starving and feral.

Once she has been introduced to each and every one of Wilbur’s elite soldiers (the rest of the army lives out in the city of L’Manburg with their respective families, the White House is only home to Wilbur’s most trusted guards.) Niki starts to do what she does best. She starts out by cleaning the house, which takes her almost the entire day, and then she moves on to cooking. While she makes dinner, she lets Tubbo and Tommy help her, to try and introduce them to cooking. She makes bread from scratch and shows the boys how to do it themselves in case she isn’t there to help them. 

Niki makes fresh bread and a simple soup, the same one she had made for Tommy on the night she first met him. She tries to show the L’Manburgians how to do it, but Tubbo is the only one who seems to understand her when she explains it, the others simply staring at her in disbelief.

She resolves that Tubbo will be her cooking protege, and then she serves dinner.

~~~

Outside of the window of Niki’s new sleeping quarters, cicadas sing their song and moonflowers bloom in the garden. Niki stands on a balcony, gazing out at her new homeland. It’s beautiful, she decides as she admires the moonlit garden of the White House, rolling fields, and in the distance, she sees the lights of the city itself, still bustling this late at night. It doesn’t feel like a war-torn nation should, Niki thinks, it’s so calm, so peaceful. There are no children crying, no sounds of battle. It’s odd, this late night mist that seems to creep into the whole nation, turning the world silent, making Niki feel as though she’s the only person in the whole world, here on a balcony while the wind whispers through her golden curls, and her almost see-through nightgown moves with the leaves as they rustle from the cool evening breeze. 

Niki sighs and steps back into her room, taking a seat at her new vanity and brushing through her hair, staring at her own reflection. For a moment, out of the corner of her eye she sees a silhouette, but when she spins around to find it, expecting some sort of assailant, she is met with empty air. She takes in a deep breath and assures herself that she’s just skittish from the move, the new environment is just making her nervous.

She goes back to brushing her hair as if nothing had happened, and possibly nothing had. 

Then Niki Nihachu goes to bed, her first day as a revolutionary complete. The sheets are soft, softer than the ones she’d had back home, and she wonders absently how these people who could not even cook managed to afford such a house, with such high quality accommodations. Before she can ponder it further, however, Niki drifts into a comfortable sleep, the smell of jasmine wafting in through the open window.


	2. Melody Like Old Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tubbo gets attacked by a plant, there’s a fox in Fundy’s bed and Niki meets with a memory under the wisteria tree.

There is a faint light streaming in through large windows, tearing Niki from her deep sleep. She smells jasmine faintly, the scent floating in from outside, and hears the sounds of birdsong. She sighs, comfortably, fully aware that she needs to get up around now. Her eyes flutter open to see her new room, the clean white walls and dimly lit interior don’t do much to rouse her, especially since she can already tell that it’s going to be cold. She makes a sound akin to a hum, voice slightly raspy from sleep as she pulls herself out of bed. She sits up, kicking the sheets away gently, and steps out of bed.

She makes the bed, carefully arranging the pillows and smoothing out the sheets. She yawns a little when she’s finished. Then she changes into a rather plain green dress with white lace on the trimmings and brushes her hair, deciding to plait it once she has. She looks at herself in the mirror, and upon deciding that she looks good enough to start the day, leaves her room. 

The hallway is full of paintings, mostly of the L’Manburg elite; Tommy, Tubbo, Wilbur, Fundy and Eret, but there are a few with two men she doesn’t recognize. The one man is short and blonde and wears green in every portrait he appears in and the other is tall, not quite as tall as Wilbur, but tall, with pink hair and a crown. She had thought L’Manburg was anti-monarchy, but the man in the paintings was wearing a crown and grinning ear to ear next to Wilbur and Tommy. She smiles, perhaps he was family of them, although there is a faint tugging feeling in the back of her mind. She had seen the man in the crown before, she is sure, she just doesn’t know when.

She is snapped out of her trance when she reaches the stairwell, or rather, bumps into it, smacking into the railings. She sucks in a struggling breath. That is definitely going to leave a bruise.

She composes herself after a moment or two and descends down towards the ground floor, ready to begin making breakfast so it’ll be ready when she goes to wake up her new housemates. She finds, once she reaches the bottom of the stairs, that there is a faint light emitting from the kitchen. Her breath catches in her throat, worry finding its way into her heart and making her shake as she walks up to the kitchen. 

She assumes that there is some form of intruder (one can never be too careful during wartime), here to assassinate the General and his family in an effort to quell the rebellion. Instead, it’s just Wilbur, who jumps out of his seat when she darts in, aiming a decorative sword she had found found on the wall straight at him. He stares at her. She stares back.

“Er...Good morning?” He says, holding up his hands in surrender

She blushes, and comes to terms with the fact that he has either directly or indirectly caused her to do so on multiple occasions despite her insistence that she doesn’t usually get flustered. Niki lowers the sword, allowing an awkward silence to engulf the entire room. Unfortunately, the problem with awkward silences is that people will quite often try to fill them, and Niki is no exception.

“Y-you’re up early...” She stutters, “S-sorry for panicking...and pointing a sword at you”

To illustrate her point, she gently places the sword down on the kitchen counter.

“It’s no problem, I’m just surprised that you know how to use a sword...not a very ladylike thing to know.” He smirks at her, a playful glint in his eye.

“Well, when you have to treat a sword wound it’s quite nice to know how to got there in the first place.” Niki tells him, an explanation that her grandmother had long ago taught her on a freezing Sunday night in January.He nods, seemingly satisfied. 

“Why  are you awake so early?” She asks, curiosity overwhelming her desire to make this entire awkward transaction come to an end. His expression darkens for a fraction of a second, but Niki doesn’t fail to notice the flash of...something close to anger. Colder, more controlled...anticipation?

“Nightmares.” He mutters, “Damn things keep me awake all night.”

Niki knows the feeling all too well, having faced hundreds of nights where she had woken up to a tightness in her chest and a sensation that she was being watched. She gives him a tired, sympathetic smile.

“Why are you up?” He asks, brightening up and changing the subject. 

“I got up to make breakfast before everyone wakes up. You got up before I could, though.” She attempts to brighten the mood, smiling politely.

Wilbur returns her smile, but she can tell that he hasn’t slept, the tiredness in his eyes, his voice, even in his demeanor is clear to see. She makes a mental note to try and fix that, before she steps around the counter and starts looking through the ingredients that she had brought with her (she had already been told that they only had carrots and a shipment of potatoes that came in every month from a source that Tommy claimed he could not name, when she heard that she simply assumed it was him trying to appear more intriguing, but discovered that there were actually quite a few potatoes in the kitchen cabinets). Niki notes that the cooking utensils are clean, unused except for last night when she had made dinner.

She’s going to cook some breakfast, which will probably involve eggs in some way, just because Niki had used eggs so many times that she knows how to cook them perfectly to almost anyone’s tastes. She cracks the eggs into the pan and decides to scramble them, the easiest to do.

Wilbur comes up behind her at some point, staring over her shoulder to watch her cook. He doesn’t say anything, which makes her nervous (she isn’t quite sure why his silence unnerved her, but it does). She’s painfully aware of his presence, but nevertheless she continues to cook in silence while he watches, not daring to say anything due to some strange anxiety that she can’t quite name.

“You know, Tommy likes his with a lot of salt, perhaps you could add some to his...Our father used to make us eggs when we were little and Tommy would always cry if his didn’t have enough salt.” Niki can hear the smile in his voice, like he’s remembering something fondly. She can also tell that he’s trying to fill the silence and make their current degree of closeness seem normal. She feels internally grateful for his attempt.

“Sounds like he was a picky eater.” Niki chuckles as she scrambled the eggs.

“Oh, believe me, he was. He used to throw tantrums if he didn’t like the food Dad made for him.” Wilbur sniggers.

They lapse into a silence after a short fit of laughter from them both. This time, it isn’t awkward, it’s comfortable. Niki feels like she’s known Wilbur for years, like she doesn’t even need to say anything for him to know how she feels. It’s an odd feeling, but Niki finds it quite pleasant. 

She finishes cooking the eggs after a little bit and he backs up so she can scoop them out into the six plates she had laid out for everyone. She remembers to add extra salt to one of them, thinking about how Wilbur had told her a fond little memory. It makes her trust him just a tiny bit more, but then again she’s always been very trusting.

Suddenly she is ripped from her thoughts by the sound of a scream. For a second she is frozen, but she immediately recovers and rushes in the direction of the sound. It had come from outside, somewhere on the grounds, so she runs out the door. Wilbur runs after her, catching up to her quickly due to the fact that he isn’t wearing a dress and holding onto an empty greased frying pan like she is. 

“Greenhouse.” He manage to tell her as they’re running, pointing in the direction of a foggy glass building to their left. Niki turns so that she’s running toward it. It takes her less than a minute to get there and burst through the door, finding not a room full of enemies, and instead she finds herself face to face with a plant.

It’s quite a nice plant, but she notes that it is huge and appears to have teeth. Plants don’t usually, in her experience, have teeth. She lets out a surprised squeak, but is cut off by the sound of someone by her feet telling her something that she can’t quite hear over her own startled noise. She shuts up and looks down to see Tubbo on the floor. He’s bleeding from his arm, which is probably why there had been a scream that lead her into the greenhouse in the first place.

“Please don’t shout, it aggravates Agatha.”

Niki stares at him in disbelief, sinking down to her knees so she can examine him. The cut is in his arm. She realizes, to her horror, that it is not a cut, but a bite, tearing through his skin and through his nightshirt. While she gauges the damage she decides to talk to him in an effort to calm him down and find out what on earth happened here.

“...Agatha?”

“The plant monster...I was trying to make her smaller but she bit me.”

“It’s a she?”

“Yes, Miss. I made her myself.”

Niki stares at him in a mixture of awe and confusion. She doesn’t fail to notice the way that Tubbo falters under her gaze. She sighs quietly and hears Wilbur walk in behind her.

“Agatha acting up again?” He asks, as though being violently attacked by one’s pet plant monster is a totally normal occurrence. Perhaps it is, here in L’Manburg.

~~~

In the end, Wilbur helped her carry the injured boyto the “medical ward” (which was actually Tommy and Tubbo’s shared room). Tommy had been quite irritated at being woken up because of “Tubbo’s stupid plant trying to fuckin’ eat him again!” As he put it, covering his face with a pillow as he thrashed around in his bed. 

Tubbo had been very polite, and unnervingly calm about the whole thing. He let Niki clean him up and wrap his arm in bandages with an absentminded apology. She found it very strange, the whole situation. Tubbo hadn’t even seemed hurt, just said sorry for startling her by shouting as he explained that Agatha -his carnivorous pet plant that he had summoned with his magic- was really quite sweet and that the problem was not, in fact, that she was carnivorous, but rather that he always held his arms out too close to her. Niki thought of him quite differently after that. 

She finished treating the bite after an hour or so, then went downstairs to go remake breakfast, seeing as it had probably cooled, only to find Wilbur and Eret eating in the kitchen. She didn’t quite know what to say, so she didn’t say anything and instead plopped into one of the chairs at the kitchen counter.

Eret waves at her, saying something about how unfortunate it is that she had to deal with Tubbo’s plant related injuries on her first day. He explains to her that he usually gets bitten at least once a month, but it usually just gets better with time and a lot of herbal tea. She glares at him.

“Oh.” She said, remembering that she had one more thing to do, “Fundy needs to come have breakfast.” Wilbur looks like he wants to say something, but before he can, she stands up and marches upstairs to go find him. 

She contemplates her new life as she climbs up the stairs, comparing her expectations to the reality. out into the hall she goes, glancing briefly at the strangers in the paintings and feeling a tinge of pride when she notes the cleanliness of the entire place. She stops outside the door to the youngest soldier she’s ever encountered’s room and absentmindedly swings open the door. He isn’t there. Her eyes hover over everything in the room, pausing when she notices that there’s a fox in Fundy’s bed.

“What the-“ she managed before it looks up and locks eyes with her. There is something strange about it’s eyes. They’re like a sort of middle ground between human and animal and she stops talking just to stare at them. The fox’s tail swishes at her.

Niki decides that it is in her best interest to immediately shut the door and go somewhere else. She does so, very gently closing the door and fixing the strange animal with an apologetic look. 

This is going to be much stranger than I expected , she thinks as she walks aimlessly back downstairs.

Wilbur gives her a questioning look when she gets back “Where’s Fundy?” He asks and Niki simply shakes her head.

“Fox.” She says, and goes to do the washing up. She takes Wilbur and Eret’s empty plates and starts scrubbing them silently, thoughts bouncing around in her head.

~~~

The day had only gotten more eventful from there. Fundy had come downstairs to eat breakfast, then Wilbur had yanked everyone except for Niki into a room and held a meeting (which she had listened to at the door). She had thought it would be something to do with the war and strategy and that, but instead it had just been Wilbur shouting at everyone to be nice to her and telling Fundy to stop scaring her. Niki hadn’t quite understood why it was Fundy who was in trouble, when clearly the fox in his room was to blame for her distress. She had listened at the door for about ten minutes before she decided to actually get some things don, which is how she ended up here.

She had told herself that she would go out and do some gardening or shopping or something, anything productive. But that’s not what she’s doing at all. She’s standing under a wisteria tree in the garden and reading a plaque that had been fastened to it. It looks like it’s been there for years, so rusted that she can barely make out the words. All she managed to read is

In Memory of A Great Friend and Better Rival

Someone died, she realizes. She’s alone in the middle of a field owned by L’Manburg, reading a rusted little plaque dedicated to someone who is dead. It’s absurd, and it’s sad and everything feels too real, like her senses have been heightened. She hears the buzzing of insects everywhere around her, feels the slightest gust of wind and smells...moonflowers. It’s daytime, she realizes, why can she smell moonflowers?

A gust of wind ruffles her hair and she swears she hears a hum in it, a melodic little tune she knows she’s never heard before, but it feels so  familiar , like déjà vu. Everything feels like a dream, but somehow it feels realer than anything else she’s ever felt and she doesn’t know how that’s even possible. She feels like she isn’t alone, like she’s being observed.

And then it’s gone, the melody, the sudden hyper-awareness, the scent of moonflowers. It’s all gone.

Niki goes back inside. She doesn’t say anything about the wisteria tree, because what could she possibly say? She doesn’t ask about the little rusted plaque, or the strange feeling that she wasn’t alone. She keeps silent and gets to making lunch while the others talk strategy in a room she isn’t allowed to go into.

This is the strangest place I’ve ever been in my life,  she thinks as she finishes cooking lunch.

She calls out to them when she’s done plating everything, and then they eat together in the dining room. She had madepotatoes, not wanting to let the ones in the cupboard go bad, and steak. Her food is complimented a few times over the meal, but Niki feels absentminded the whole time, barely listening to whatever the conversation is and only chiming in with a “Uh huh” or a polite hum every now and then.

~~~

That night she dreams. She dreams she is standing by the wisteria tree and reading the plaque. The sky is a strange mix of colour, like a sunset and a sunrise and an aurora put together to form a beautiful light show above her head. The dress she’s wearing is purple and blue and shimmers in ways she’s never seen before. She can feel damp grass below her, dewdrops planting kisses on her bare feet as she gazes at the tree. She can smell the same scent of moonflowers and somewhere far away, someone is playing a music box that serenades her with the same melody from that morning. She breathed in deeply and her lungs fill with fresh air, fresher than any breath she’s ever taken. 

“Beautiful...” She says under her breath

“It is.” A voice responds from behind her, and she spins around to find the source.

A young man stands there. He has a face that looks like it was meant for smirking and a glint in his eyes that reminds her of Wilbur. He wears a suit, a neat red tire wrapped around his neck, his eyes are crimson and his hair is dark.

He smiles at her. She smiles back, without meaning to.

“Who are you?” She asks, as a faint breeze blows again her skin.

“I’m a memory. Not yours though.” He says to her

“Who’s?” She asks, though she didn’t mean to say a word

“You’ll see.” He promises her, his knowing smirk slowly starting to get on her nerves.

“What is this place?”  
  


“It’s a memory too, but not like me. This one is yours, it just hasn’t happened yet.” He tells her, and she notices that he shimmers and shifts like air around a fire.

“I’m going now, but you can stay.” He says after a few moments, and slowly his form flickers until he’s gone.

She doesn’t feel afraid or confused at the sight, something she finds odd. She turns to look up at the glittering sky and smiles.

She lies down in the grass, lets the fresh dew touch her skin as she lays down to watch the sky for what feels like forever. And maybe it is, in this strange world from a dream.


	3. Hearts Flutter Into Sunsets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fox reappears. Niki watches the sunset with Wilbur and feels something that definitely isn’t love but maybe it could be. The man in her dreams tells her who he is and she watches a kaleidoscope sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngggghhhhh this chapter is really short bc I wanted to get it out today
> 
> Other than that, enjoy the fluff and also the bit of plot that I included

The next morning she is awoken not by her internal clock, but by a fox. The fox from Fundy’s room. It is sitting on the edge of her bed and staring at her in a way that she would describe as malicious. Her mind is clouded by sleep, but she is quite sure that there was not a malicious fox in her bed when she last checked. 

She carefully rolls over to the side of the bed that is furthest from it. It continues to stare, and out of fear she maintains eye contact. She wants to shout for someone to come help, but she stops herself. That would be idiotic, she thinks, shouting for help just because some weird eyed fox has hijacked her bed. No, she decides firmly, she will sort this out on her own.

She crawls out of bed, her eyes never leaving the fox. If foxes could look patronizing, this one did.

“Stop staring at me. I’m not scared of you.” She tells it, mentally scolding herself for talking to an animal, like some fairytale princess.

Niki knows full well that she is the furthest thing from a fairytale princess, having worked hard all her life and never in her all her years even thought to wish upon a star, because that would be a waste of time and she would have gotten scolded for wishing on stars when she could be doing her chores by her grandmother. Besides, those girls in fairytales only ever spoke to little woodland creatures like bluebirds and deer. This was a fox she was dealing with.

Speaking of which, the fox yawns, an action that Niki finds both adorable and insulting. Was it being intentionally cute, or was it mocking her? She decides not to ask as she safely traverses the bedroom, eventually making it to her vanity. She grabs her hair brush and stares down the furry intruder as she brushes her messy hair into an acceptably neat state, eventually breaking eye contact with the fox in her bed.

When she finishes with her hair, she decides that it would be polite to inform the fox that she was going to dress now, hoping that it would understand and maybe turn around, or hopefully leave.

“I’m going to change into my dress now. Perhaps you should leave.”

If foxes could look embarrassed, this one does as it jumps off of her bed and scampers away. Her new fox nemesis is apparently very respectful. She appreciates the sentiment and continues to think about the stranger in her room as she dresses. Today she wears purple, because it reminds her of the dress she wore in her dream, though it could never compare to the fictitious dress’s elegance and whimsy. She likes this dress well enough, even if it doesn’t shimmer when she moves or shift and flow like water. 

She thinks about her dream as well. She remembers a wisteria tree and the smell of moonflowers as she hums a melody that feels familiar but isn’t. The man in her dream had called himself a memory. A memory that wasn’t hers. She wonders what he could have meant by that and thinks about whose memory he could be. It hadn’t felt like a dream. The man didn’t seem like a dream either. The entire thing had felt so grounded in reality and yet so separate from it. Like floating around in a space that you know is real but somehow isn’t.

Niki decides to push those musings away, because for now she has work to do. She steps out of her room and finds that for once she appears to be the only one awake (aside from Fundy, who she finds in the kitchen, claiming that he’s there because he had just fed Agatha). She smiles at him and tells him to help her with breakfast.

For today she decides on sausages and eggs with toasted bread, which is what she prepares. Before it’s finished cooking, however, she insists upon making tea. Earl Grey is her personal favorite for breakfast, so she makes some and adds sugar according to what Fundy tells her are the preferences of everyone in the house. She tells him to watch the food while she goes to wake everyone else.

~

She goes first to Tommy and Tubbo’s shared room, knocking on the door as politely as she can and pushing open the door with her foot when there’s no answer. She enters to find them both in Tommy’s bed, draped over one another and tangled together in a way that she can’t imagine feels comfortable, yet they both look peaceful. 

Before she even dares to wake the two sleeping teens, she glances at the room itself. The room was clearly meant to be separated into two separate areas, but things belonging to both boys litter the entire place indiscriminately, so there is no distinct separation aside from a very scratched and faded line drawn down the center of the room. On the side that houses Tubbo’s bed, there is laundry on the floor and a shelf full of several different plants, presumably for use during Tubbo’s botanical experiments. On the other side there are weapons, an axe and a few different swords prominently displayed in glass cases on the wall. They each have labels, but Niki doesn’t feel like reading them at the moment.

She thinks it’s sweet, how close the boys are, but she also thinks that they should wake up now. She puts down two cups of tea on the bedside table between the two beds (one of which is empty) and gently shakes Tubbo’s shoulder. He yawns softly as he rubs sleep from his eyes, eventually nodding at her subtle nod towards Tommy, a silent plea to wake him up so that she doesn’t have to deal with his morning grumpiness.

He smiles and gives her a quick thumbs up after she points to the tea, and then she’s off to wake Eret next.

~

Eret’s room is decorated with blue painted walls and a few paintings, unlike the other rooms. He has a desk and a bookshelf which are clearly a matching set and, upon close inspection, the bed also appears to be a part of the furniture collection. His room is well put together and neat, everything in its place, down to every minor detail. Even the paintings on his walls appear to be a series of loosely related artistic landscapes.

She head over to the person-shaped lump that is softly snoring and gently shifting around in Eret’s bed, gently placing down the cup of tea and nearly flinching when she hears it clack. She decides to wake him in the exact same way that she woke Tubbo, a quick shake of the shoulder and a smile when his eyes open. 

As she is busy rousing her housemate a thought strikes her and she begins to worry that his voice could possibly be even deeper now that it’s morning. She decides that it doesn’t bare to think about and shoves the idea aside so she can focus on getting Eret to wake up. He groans at her, a good sign that he’s conscious, so she nudges him again until he shifts around so he can turn to look at her.

“In the nicest way possible, can you please make your exit? I’m up.” Her theory was right, his voice is so deep that it sounds like what Niki imagines an earthquake would sound like if earthquakes could speak. She also feels quite nice that he told her to shove off so politely, very considerate of him in her opinion.

“Sorry. I made you tea.” She says softly and points to the warm cup on his bedside table, before leaving the room, still holding the last two cups of tea on a tray, one for her and one for Wilbur.

~

In comparison to everyone else’s, Wilbur’s room is incredibly plain. It consists of a bed with plain sheets, a desk that is covered in papers and books and parchment and ink, a closet in the corner of the room and a single painting on the wall. It’s of the Wisteria tree, Niki notes and wonders who painted it. She tiptoes into the room, making sure that the tea doesn’t spill as she does.

She sets down the tea, but this time she sets down her own cup beside Will’s. Rather unintentionally she catches a glimpse of his sleeping face when she’s busy putting done the tea, and she suddenly finds herself glancing towards him again. 

He looks restless, brows furrowed and lips pressed into a thin line. He shifts around, twitching a bit every few minutes. She doesn’t know exactly how or why, but she ends up sitting on the the edge of his bed. She can tell that he’s having a nightmare -she’s dealt with enough traumatized patients to know when a person is having bad dreams. Niki decides to try and comfort him the same way her grandmother had taught her to help a restless patient when she was young, so she gently runs her fingers through his hair and hums quietly to him. She starts out with simple tuneless humming, but the melody slowly shifts into the one she had heard in her dream. A lullaby of sorts. 

To her surprise, it seems to work. She watches Wilbur’s features relax. A part of her can’t help but think that he looks quite handsome when he’s so peaceful, but she quickly dismisses any such thoughts. Despite the embarrassing little snippets of her thoughts on Wilbur, it’s calming, being in such a quiet place, just enjoying the presence of another human being. She feels comfortable here.

She wonders if maybe she should just let him sleep, but she reminds herself that these are dire times and that Wilbur needs to do his work as the general of the L’Manburg army. She gently touches his shoulder, but it feels different than when she woke the others. More intimate.

His eyes flutter open, (Niki’s mind doesn’t hesitate to provide a comment on how pretty his eyes are. She ignores the thought.)

“Morning, Will.” She whispers

“Mmh...Morning.” He looks tired. A pang of guilt hits her when she realizes that she could have let him sleep. His voice is rough, his curly brown hair is sticking out all over the place and his eyes are half-lidded, an indication of his sleepiness.

And then there is, for the second time since she moved here, a scream early in the morning. Well, it’s less of a pained shriek like Tubbo’s scream, and more of a startled yelp coming from the kitchen. Niki runs downstairs, followed by Wilbur, who stumbles every step of the way.

They find Fundy in the kitchen holding a pan of burnt sausages.

“Sorry I screamed. Burnt my hand.” He says sheepishly, running his fingers through his hair.

Niki sighs and helps him run his hand under the cold water as she half listens to Wilbur scolding his adopted son. She wonders if injuries are just an everyday thing. Perhaps there will be a scream every morning. Niki does not look forward to that, should it be the case.

~

She spends the rest of the morning and afternoon absentmindedly fulfilling her duties. She cleans the house, washes the dishes, makes lunch and just generally looks after everyone. 

At around noon, Wilbur leaves with Tommy to go into the main city and address the concerns of all the soldiers. Before he leaves he tells her that they’re all antsy. They haven’t been attacked in a while and people are beginning to worry that Dream has something big planned. She can tell that Wilbur has similar concerns by the uncertainty in his face when he explains it to her.

Wilbur and Tommy come back at three o’clock in the afternoon, in time for lunch, which is Niki’s famous fresh baked bread, sliced into sandwiches with ham and cheese. She is once again thanked by Wilbur and the others for helping them out. 

Little else of note happens that day, and in the late afternoon Niki goes out to the wisteria to watch the sunset. It’s beautiful, but not quite as surreal and incredible as her dream. It is while she is watching the sunset that Wilbur joins her inexplicably. He just wanders over to her, hands in his coat pockets and smiles at her.

“Afternoon, Niki.”

“Good afternoon, Will.”

He leans against the tree beside her. “What are you doing out here so late, hmm?” He asks, taking his hands out of his pockets so his fingers can trace the plaque hammered into the wood.

“I thought I’d come watch the sunset. It’s quite beautiful from here.”

Wilbur nods. “It’s lovely. I used to watch it with a friend of mine and my brothers.” He smiles fondly, as though recalling something.

“Brothers? I thought you only had Tommy.” She says, joining him in leaning against the wood.

“There’s one more. The middle child, Techno. He’s made quite a name for himself in the exorcism world.” 

Niki thinks about the name. Techno, a name she is sure she’d heard before. She decides to try and find out more about the mysterious sibling.

“Is he in the paintings?” She asks, thinking of the man in the crown.

“Oh yes. He has a very odd sense of fashion, mind you. Dyeing his hair pink and growing it out like that.”

Something clicks in Niki’s mind and her eyes widen in shock.

“Your brother is...Technoblade? The blade? Infamous exorcist and warrior?” She stares at Wilbur in disbelief.

“Afraid so, my dearest Niki.” He sighs.

Niki has to do a double take to let herself process the information.

“What a remarkable family. A rebel fighting for independence, a famous warrior and...a child with a tendency to never shut up.”

Wilbur laughs. Loud and carefree. Niki’s heart gives a flutter at the sound.

“Tommy is a child, isn’t he?” He tells her, still smiling at her as though she had just told him the funniest joke in the world. She can’t help but return his genuine smile.

“He certainly is.” She agrees.

And then they watch the sunset in silence. Not because it’s awkward, but because there isn’t really anything else left for them to say. The setting sun casts the world in twilight, painting everything purple-pink hues. Niki stares at Wilbur out of the corner of her eye, because she’s not quite sure of what else to do. He looks happier than she’s seen him since they met, looking less tired and overworked and more at peace. 

~

That night when she goes to sleep, she smiles as she drifts away to her dreams. She smiles because Wilbur’s carefree laugh is still fresh in her mind, and it makes her chest swell with a feeling that isn’t love but it’s something. Something that makes her cheeks ache from grinning so hard even as she falls asleep.

She wakes up again. Except it isn’t real. She wakes up where she had laid in her dream. The man is there too, sat beside her with a moonflower in his hand, twirling it between his fingers. His hands are delicate, she notices, like those of a piano player. 

“You’re awake...well, not really. But you’re back.” He says, without looking at her.

“You’re back too.” She says, shifting into a sitting position, taking the time to notice that he has flowers in his hair.

“I think I’ll be here whenever you’re here.” He tells her, voice soft. He has an accent, but she isn’t quite sure what kind of accent. His voice is like sandpaper, in a rather pleasant way.

“Can you tell me what you’re called?”

“Schlatt. That was my name back then.”

“Schlatt? That’s an awfully odd name...” She says and looks up at the sky. It looks like a kaleidoscope of color and stardust. 

“Perhaps it is. It wasn’t my choice.” He mutters, fiddling with the delicate flower in his hands.

“Why do you have flowers in your hair?” She asks, because she has nothing better to say.

“He put them in. One day when we were fifteen.” He chuckles softly and seems to stare at something she can’t see. She glances in the general direction where he’s looking.

Her curiosity peaks and she simply needs to ask. “Who’s he? Who are you talking about?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you. He’ll tell you someday, if you ask.” He turns to look at her then and seems to regard her as though she were some new specimen in a lab. She squirms under his gaze.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She inquires.

“Because I think you ought to have flowers in your hair too.” She gives him a curious look. 

“Stop staring and come closer so I can put them in.” He says, after a beat of awkward silence.

She does. She comes closer and he carefully places the flowers that bloom in the nighttime in her honey colored locks. The rational part of her mind wonders why she’s letting him do this. She realizes that she’s letting him plait her hair with moonflowers because she wants to have them in her hair, and the rational side of her brain shuts up.

When he’s finished he lets go of her hair.

“I’m done,” he informs her, “I think you look nice. Not quite as nice as me, of course.”

She scoffs at him, but takes the compliment. He hands her a mirror and for a moment she ponders where he got it from, but then she remembers that it’s a dream so really it would make sense for him to have a mirror to show her hair to her with. She takes it and looks at the flowers braided in. She looks pretty, she decides. 

“Where did you learn to braid hair?” She asks suspiciously.

“A friend of mine’s brother had the most stupidly long hair I’ve literally ever seen. His dad taught me how so I could help out.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” Niki says absentmindedly.

She lays back down, ignoring the sound of Schlatt huffing at her -probably because lying down makes her hair messy. She stares at the sky, looking at the glittering aurora above her. Wisteria petals fall down around her, landing on her face and tickling her nose.

It’s a dream, but she wants it to be more. For it to be real. A thought crosses her mind. She wishes Wilbur was here with her. Perhaps he would laugh the way he had when she had watched the sunset with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! These are the end notes, thanks for reading this chapter!
> 
> Please remember to drink some water and take care of yourself!


	4. Stormy Sea At Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki meets Dream, though not by her own free will. Then she dreams of somewhere new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghhjjmdken help this took me so long :(  
> Sorry for the wait but here it is lads
> 
> (I’m also gonna pretend that the exile arc doesn’t exist bc it makes me sad)

  
Niki Nihachu is a simple woman. She lives her life in routines, and living in L’Manburg is no exception. After a little over a week in the White House, she settles into a pattern of doing things, which goes as follows:

She wakes up earlier than anyone else and goes downstairs. Every morning she sees a fox, either in her room, the kitchen, or Fundy’s bed. She starts her day by making tea for everyone and cooking breakfast. Then she places the food in plates and goes upstairs. She wakes Tubbo, and he walked Tommy. She wakes Fundy, unless the fox is in his bed (which only happens on mornings where he’s feeding Agatha) and then moved on to Eret, who never ceases to amaze her with his increasingly polite methods of chasing her away. Then she goes to Wilbur. She doesn’t always wake him up. Sometimes he thrashed himself awake and sits on his bed until she goes to give him his tea. Night terrors will do that to a man. 

On the mornings when Wilbur is asleep when she comes to fetch him, she watches him for a little bit. She’s not sure why she does this; perhaps because of how peaceful he looks in his sleep, or perhaps because she thinks he’s cute when he smiles in his sleep and wants to commit the rare glimpses of his softer side to memory whenever she gets the chance to. 

Then she wakes him up and they drink the tea in his room, him sitting up in his fortress of duvets and blankets, her seated on the edge of his king sized mattress. Sometimes he talks to her, sometimes he says nothing. Then they go downstairs and eat breakfast, which everyone will usually have gotten by the time Niki and Will come down for the day.

She spends the rest of the day doing chores and treating the many small injuries and accidents in the house. Sometimes Tubbo will come and try to teach her about gardening. She usually humors him, because she likes the company. Other times, Tommy will come and tell her about his brothers and father. She knows that they never met their mother, and that their father lives in the farthest areas of the countryside (“The middle of fuckin’ nowhere” Tommy told her), he knows that Wilbur was always popular and charismatic, and apparently he was once a better fighter than Technoblade, before Techno started training to become an exorcist.

Fundy talks to her more than anyone else, likely because he’s not allowed to antially fight. He’s only allowed to help with strategy, not any of the...messy stuff.

At night, when she’s already cooked dinner and put the children to bed and made Wilbur a chamomile tea to help him sleep, she goes and stands on the balcony and stares at the beautiful country that she now sees as her home. Then she bathes and brushes her hair and crawls into her soft sheets and falls asleep. 

And then she dreams. She dreams of Schlatt and the wisteria tree and moon flowers and every single night the song plays in the background. She loves that song, finds herself humming it daily, the sound is soft and sweet, though it feels sad. There’s a certain type of beauty to the melancholy melody. She dreams of wisteria trees, and of memories that aren’t hers; of multicolored auroras blooming above her like blossoms in springtime and of songs that feel like starry nights when she was small, staring at the sky out the window when she was meant to be sleeping.

Now she’s dreaming again. The same place, the same sky. The same dream. Schlatt sits next to her on the grass, dark hair full of blossoms, suit jacket on the ground beside him, his tie crumpled. They talk about absurd things like they always do.

“Schlatt?”

He hums in response. His voice is oddly soothing, despite how rough his voice is and despite his thick accent.

“Why do I have this dream every night?” She asks, absentmindedly twirling a moonflower in her hand. She doesn’t know where the flowers come from, but they’re always in this dream.

He is silent for a minute that feels like an eternity. Time in this place is...odd. Hours fade away, slipping through her fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass, while seconds seem to last for hours.

“I can’t tell you that,” he says finally, “There’ll be issues if I do.”

She knows that he’ll ignore her if she questions him further. So she doesn’t.

Suddenly he turns to her, glaring.

“What?” She asks playfully.

“You have to wake up. Right fucking now.”

“What?” Her tone changes to match his own panicked voice, but before he can answer the scenery melts away and she’s back in her bed with her eye shut tight.

Immediately something is wrong. She can feel it. There is a feeling of...tension. It’s silent, but it feels like the silence of someone trying to be very very quiet, because though she hears no sound, she feels another person in her room. She doesn’t move. She hopes it will go away on its own. She tries turning over, in hopes of scaring the unknown presence away. She holds her breath when she moves, though she doesn’t know why.

Turning over in bed was a mistake. It gives the intruder an opportunity to sneak up on her, which she realizes a second too late, because before she can try and fix her mistake there’s a hand over her mouth. 

“Shhh.” Says a voice that she know doesn’t belong to anyone who lives in the White House. She obliged and doesn’t say a word.

“Good.” It says, and her stomach sinks at the praise, because by not screaming she allowed herself to be intimidated. Another hand grabs her arm and yanks her out of bed, still holding her mouth so she can’t scream. She is dragged out of her room, though her kidnapper is quite careful not to let her get hurt. She decides that now may be her only chance to get away, so she starts struggling to no avail. The person holding her is much stronger than she is and though she wants to shove them away it’s ultimately futile. Her captor sighs on her ear.

“And you were being so obedient just now.” The voice sighs. They have an accent, which she memorizes for when she gets away and has to describe them. She continues to struggle, biting down on the hand covering her mouth. 

“Shit!” The person swears, and suddenly they twist her arm. She whimpers and accidentally releases their hand from her mouth. She curses herself. 

By now they’ve reached the staircase, and she is being dragged down, which is painful, needless to say. Any time she tries to say anything, the grip on her arm tightens. When they reach the bottom of the stairs, the attacker pauses. Niki takes the opportunity and tries to run, fighting against their grip as hard as she can. At first they just allow it, taunting her. She hears a quiet metallic noice, like metal moving around in a bag, and then she is yanked back towards the person. 

She feels the cold tip of a dagger press against her skin. Not hard enough to to draw blood, but it’s a threat. A warning to stop fighting back. She hesitantly stops her manic thrashing, and goes limp. The person kidnapping her continues to drag her out of the house. She takes the time she has to think about what their motive could possibly be. She hasn’t been here long enough for there to be a price on her head, and she’s certainly not the biggest threat to their enemies. Then it hits her. She’s being taken hostage. They probably think she’s weak. She will prove them wrong.

In the meantime, she is taken out the door and the blade is removed from her neck. The attacker practically throws her to the ground. She scrambles to her feet and rushes them.

She manages to punch the person in the face and she is rewarded by a loud “FUCK!” as they kick her back to the ground. She punches and bites and kicks as hard as she can, but they appear to have a high tolerance for pain, and they’re clearly trained better than she is.

“GEORGE!,” They whisper-yell, ”George, you dick! Get over here!”

Another figure seems to appear out of nowhere. They’re short, and apparently called George. She sees the glint of a diamond sword in their hands.

“What do you want, Sap?” The figure says. Their accent is...the same as Wilbur, Tommy; Tubbo and Eret. They’re must be from Esmerée, the origin of the accent. She wonders what they’re doing kidnapping her. 

“Well, she’s surprisingly...feisty. Can you please help me out here, man?” Her captor, the one called “Sap” whines.

George sighs loudly and lights a torch. Niki’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the sudden change, as she finally gets to look at her kidnappers. 

The one called George is a short brunette. Interestingly, he’s wearing a pair of sunglasses in the middle of the night, and he has the sort of face that looks like it could belong to a twelve year old boy, but also a twenty six year old man. It makes it hard for her to estimate his age. 

The man who is called gripping her wrists in an effort to makes her stop trying to hurt him is taller than George, but only by an inch or so. He has black hair and slightly tanned skin, and is a lot more muscular than George. He’s wearing a white shirt with a flame on it and he has a white bandana wrapped around his head. 

George struts closer to her, so she glares at him. He sighs at her.

“Shall I knock her out?” He asks casually.

The one called Sap nods frantically. “Why the hell do you think I called you over?” He snaps, annoyance in his tone.

“Jeez! Okay, Sapnap.” George says and lifts his sword, smacking her over the head with the hilt. Niki helps and curses at him, so he hits her again. The second time, he succeeds in knocking her unconscious.

~

She wakes up in a dark room. There is stone underneath her, cold against her skin. There is a window above her, but it’s too small to really be of any use other than highlighting the darkness. It does, however, tell her that it is daytime. Her fingers fly to her aching head as she gently presses on the painfully throbbing bump that had formed there. She hisses in pain, before glancing around the room. On the floor in front of her is water bottle and an iron door blocks her from escaping. She stands up, inadvertently dizzying herself as she goes to pick up the water. She grabs it and downs a few sips.

Niki realizes that her foot is attached to something, which, upon further inspection, she discovers is a chain. She had only been at the White House for a week and already she had endured Agatha the giant sentient plant creature, a malicious fox that kept following her around, her mind constantly reminding her of how nice Wilbur looked when he laughed, a recurring dream about a loudmouthed man with flowers in his hair, two teenagers and now a kidnapping . Needless to say, she was angry. Angry at her kidnappers, angry at her headache, angry at herself and angry at the world for giving her suck awful luck. When she was a child, she was told that good things happened to those who believed (but that was just what the pastor said, and her dad called him a loony anyway) but still, she is angry because she doesn’t understand why exactly she’s the one suffering all of this terrible luck. 

As she is contemplating this, the door opens and George, Sapnap and a man in a mask enter. The man is much taller than both of the others and is clearly the leader of the group. She glares at him, her eyes like daggers.

“Mornin’, Miss Nihachu. Terribly sorry for the inconvenience. I trust my associates treated you well.” His accent is definitely from the capital of the Isles. He wears a green cloak and the mask on his face is wooden, with a painted smile on it. His voice is smooth, like honey. Poisoned honey.

She scoffs at him. “They treated me about as well as a toddler would treat a very expensive vase. Badly.” 

The masked man seems to grow exasperated, and smacks the brunette beside him over the head gently.

“Ow! Why did you only hit me?”

“I hit Sapnap last time, Georgie,” he says matter-of-factly. Niki rolls her eyes at them. She appears to have been kidnapped by a group of idiots.

“Who are you?” She says loudly to interrupt the banter, “Mercenaries?”

The masked man laughs at her, and she is reminded of a tea kettle. “Oh no, certainly not.”

The man reaches behind his head and undoes the ribbon keeping his mask on. It falls into his hands with a soft thud. 

“My name,” Her eyes widen when she sees his face, already recognizing him, “is Dream. These are my personal attendants.” He tells her.

She glares at him silently. He pours at her, mock sadness in his emerald eyes.

“You’ve gone all quiet? What’s wrong?” He taunts. She spits on him. Fhe second she does so, George and Sapnap draw their swords. Dream wipes his face and smirks at her. He holds up a hand, signaling for them to sheathe their weapons, which they do.

“Now, now. She’s just upset that we have a spy on our side.” He says, and she once again thinks of how his voice sounds like poisoned honey, sweet but deadly. She glares at him, her eyes narrowed and icy. He returns her stare with a mocking smile.

“What the hell are you talking about?” She snarls.

“Just our dear friend. Though, you would call him a traitor.” Dream tells her, his grin only doubling her desire to punch him in the face several times. She doesn’t respond, too busy pondering who he could be talking about. Who would betray them?

Dream’s smile only seems to widen as he watches her face. 

“So then, young lady, do you know why you’re here?”

“I’m a hostage, most likely. I don’t understand why, I’m not that valuable.” She says matter-of-factly.

“Correct. As for why we chose you: You’re the weakest. According to our source, you’re the most emotional.” Dream says. Niki can’t stop herself. She laughs. 

Dream’s doesn’t stop smiling, but she can tell his expression is a bit strained. “What’s so funny?” He asks, his voice bearing just the tiniest hint of annoyance.

“Just that you think that emotional mean weak. You’re a fool, your highness, and I look forward to watching you fall.”

His expression flickers for just a moment. There is a darkness in his eyes and she can tell that she’s cracked his facade, if only a little bit. His mask is breaking, she thinks bitterly as she returns his smile.

“Sapnap, George. Let’s let our guest get some rest.” Dream says, turning on his heel.

“Wasn’t she just asleep?-“ Sapnap starts to ask, only to be cut off by Dream strutting away. George gives Niki a sympathetic glance as they follow the king out of her cell.

~

All in all, being a hostage isn’t quite as awful as she had expected. She doesn’t get tortured, for one, and she’s already found out some new information: there’s a traitor amongst them. Then again, Dream could be lying to her in an effort to create conflict when she is released. Niki decides that her best bet is to devote this time in captivity to trying to figure out Dream’s words.

A traitor? She tries to think about it logically: it could be any one of Wilbur’s subordinates, the lieutenants and captains and other officers...But how would they know about her? Does he talk about her? Her face flushes at the idea, but she stops herself, derailing that train of thought before it gets out of hand.

She knows it can’t be Fundy, he’s too young to really understand the fighting, and Tommy and Tubbo are terrible liars. Wilbur wouldn’t betray himself, so it can’t be him. That leaves Eret, but she trusts him too much to think such a thing. She decides then that it must be one of the many officers that report to Will.

She hears the door unlock behind her, so she turns around to see a man she had never seen before. He’s shorter than the others, though not quite as short as George, and his hair is a light brown mop of messy curls. He wears a multicolored hoodie and he looks nervous. In his arms is a glass of water and a tray of surprisingly tasty looking food.

“I-I’m sorry. About all of this.” He tells her, handing the tray to her. 

Niki regards him quizzically, her brows furrowed. She watches his face contort in embarrassment.

“What’s your name?” She asks

“Karl. Karl Jacobs.” He mumbles, just loud enough for her to hear him.

“Thanks for the food, Karl. Tell Dream that he can go fuck himself.” She says.

He nods nervously at her declaration and hurriedly leaves, scrambling out of the cell. Niki watches him blankly.

She goes back to thinking, sipping her water as she sits on the edge of the bed/bench combination in the corner of the room. She considers her options. She could try and escape, but she’s not sure that will work. Dream is fast and she’s in his land, which means that if she’s discovered she will most definitely be caught. She could always try and do it stealthily, but she’s a bit clumsy and gets distracted easily, which would make a stealth mission hard to pull off.

Niki decides to try and bide her time for now. She’ll just have to deal with captivity until she comes up with a plan.

She glances at the food that Karl left for her. Mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables. She likes potatoes well enough, so she eats some. She knows she could be spiteful and refuse to eat, but that would be counterproductive. She’ll need energy if she wants to get out of here. 

She tenderly reaches for the top of her head and touches the place where George had hit her. It stings, and she flinches. She wonders if the ache is from the first time he hit her or the second time. She pulls her fingers away and glances at her hand. She’s not bleeding, so that’s a relief. She’s quite sure she isn’t concussed, so in hindsight, she’s glad he didn’t have to hit her a third time.

She spends the rest of the day stewing in her anger. Anger at herself for not fighting back harder, anger at her captors for hiding her here. Honestly, she’s just angry in general. She wants to punch someone (and feels rather frustrated that she hadn’t punched Dream when she had the chance to).

She realizes slowly that she probably shouldn’t have eaten the food that Karl had given her, because she feels unusually sleepy. Dream had said that he needed her to rest...and Karl works for Dream...

Those thoughts twirl around and around inside her head in a spiral of increasingly nonsensical ideas. She slips out of consciousness slowly, like the tides coming in. Her thoughts seems to float away from her like blue balloons into a purple-pink sky, though she tries to reach out and grab them. 

~  
She is not under the wisteria tree when she opens her eyes in her dreams. She looks up, and the sky is an only midnight black. She is barefoot, stood on what feels like rock. The scent of salt water hits her nose, the taste of it fills her lungs when she breathes. There is the sound of crashing waves hitting the cliff she now realizes that she‘a standing on.

“You’re not meant to be here.” Says a familiar voice and Niki spins around to face Schlatt.

“Why not-“ She starts to ask, before she stops herself when she sees him. There are horns on his head. The horns of a ram, with blood dripping down his face from where they start. He looks disheveled and sickly, pale skin and cold expression, empty of the spark she had seen in him when they first met. 

“Schlatt? What happened to you?” She asks, but he doesn’t answer the question.

“I said you shouldn’t be here. It’s not yours.” He insists, growing louder and more aggressive with every word.

“I’m sorry!” She says, her voice sounds tired and confused, making the apology seem insincere.

“You’re not! You’re still here and you shouldn’t be!”

“I don’t know how to leave!” Thunder cracks behind her, she feels the wind pick up, yanking on her wavy hair and making her shiver from its icy temperature.

He turns away from her. Turns away and looks up at the dark sky, like if the ceiling o f the world itself was painted black.

“Figure it out. Before he takes me.” He mutters, his anger faded to something halfway between dread and annoyance. Niki tries, she really does. She tries to think of anywhere else, but every time she thinks she’s about to succeed the image of the black was and the back sky and the black rocks fills her mind, like some poisonous gas that fills her lungs and won’t be dispelled no matter what she tries.

She looks down at her hands and sees that they are shaking, but her skin is numb for the unrelenting wind. Gently she moves her fingers up to her face, and realizes that she’s crying.

She wants to go home. She wants her normal dreams back. She wants to be safe and happy in her bed in the White House, smelling flowers and hearing songs and gazing up at a beautiful sky with colours blooming like blossoms in the springtime.

But she doesn’t know how, and that fact makes her sob. Louder that the sound of the storm that had only just begun to rage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! If you’re reading this can you help me come up with a new title for this fic, I feel like the current one is too lengthy but I’m pretty burnt out atm
> 
> Other than that, thanks for sticking around :)


	5. Home Is Linen Bedsheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki misses home, in every sense of the word.
> 
> She feels lost. And Karl’s cooking does not help.
> 
> Then she is found.
> 
> (Some of this needs editing but I don’t have a beta and English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for any errors)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey! I’m a so sorry this took such a long time!
> 
> I took a VERY long break to spend some time with my girlfriend and family, but I’m back now. I’m quite sure the next chapter will be here in the next week or two, so please bare with me ;-;

Niki hates captivity, she decides. Ever since she was put into the dirty uncomfortable little cell, she’s been having the exact same nightmare every night. Schlatt repeating the same words over and over to her like a mantra while a storm brews around them and a dark water crashes against a cliff, thunder muffling her pained sobs. She always cries in her nightmares, cries when she wakes up too. 

And it’s not only nightmares that she has to deal with, but she’s also been forced to have Karl as her only company, which isn’t quite bad, more...tiring. Karl loves to talk, and is under the impression that she loves to listen. He is wrong. 

At least he isn’t as bad as the others, who are all uniquely annoying in a variety of ways. Sapnap, for example: he likes to brainstorm with her, rattling off ideas and schemes, which he calls his “Sapdaddy 800 IQ plans”. He tries to make her help him, and is constantly seeking critiques on his plans (an example of one of them involved trying to build a house specifically for the purpose of making pudding. She told him that was just a pudding shop without any profit and he had stormed off in a huff). Sapnap is at least entertaining though, his proposals usually make her laugh. Not in front of him, though, she’d hate for him to think she doesn’t utterly despise him.

George is also annoying, with his awkward apology for smacking her with his sword and his nervous smiles when she says that it doesn’t matter. He’s always fidgeting, or trying to get information out of her to gain Dream’s favor. At least he tries to be nice though, offering her actual answers when she asks him how her friends are doing. He tells her that they’re falling apart without her, and she almost thanks him for not lying to her before she forces herself to stop.

George is...watery. Not weak, mind you. He’s strong enough to fend for himself and she’s seen him fight with Dream through the tiny window that she can see through if she stands on her tiptoes. The window gives her a view into the training area, which is a sort of arena, with seats surrounding it like a kind of coliseum, albeit much smaller than the real thing. It’s got dummies for practicing fighting on the sidelines, which Sapnap likes to set up so that they look like an audience. Niki finds it creepy, but to each their own. 

George is not weak. But he is oddly awkward to her, which is strange because he has no problem talking to Dream as Sapnap and Karl. She’s starting to think it’s because she’s a woman, but perhaps she’s just delusional. She wouldn’t be surprised if the dinners that Karl give her (which aren’t bad, they just contain sleeping pills) are making her lose her mind a little bit.

Speaking of Karl, he knocks on the door for the second time that day, probably to serve lunch. Outside the window Dream’s “attendants” are busy pretending to be Wilbur and making fun of his accent. Niki finds it disturbing how clearly human they are. She had always assumed they were these cold, uncaring monsters, when they were simply people. Not good or bad, just people.

She remembers that Karl is still standing outside. Despite the fact that he’s the one with the key keeping her prisoner, he still has the decency to knock on her door instead of just waltzing in like the others. He treats her cell like he would treat her home, which is odd, but endearing. She calls for him to come in, and he does, pushing open the door with his foot due to the heavy tray in his hands. 

“You do know that you can come in without asking me, right? You literally have the key.” She informs him as he enters, making the already tiny cell feel even smaller.

“I know. I’m just trying to be respectful.” He tells her, kicking the door closed behind him.

“Right, right. What’s on the menu today?” She asks to swiftly change the subject.

“I made you corn.” He says slowly.

“Just corn?” She asks. Karl doesn’t usually make one thing for her, in fact he makes her better meals than she expects most prisoners receive. 

“Sap told me to stop making you nicer food than I make for him,” Karl shrugs, “It’s not my fault you’re my favorite prisoner we’ve ever had.”

Niki nods. The food he makes for her is noticeably high quality. She doesn’t respond though, preferring to stay silent. She might like Karl but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t technically her enemy. Niki does not want to be accused of fraternizing with the enemy.

She thinks once more of home, of how Wilbur would smile at her when they were alone in the early hours of the morning, her sat on the edge of his bed, gently running her hands over the sheets. She thinks of how he would look at her, all bathed in sunrise spilling in from the semi-closed curtains, his eyes like something warm and cozy. The look in his eyes in the early morning made her feel safe. Like a fireplace in winter, warmth radiating off of him in waves. She thinks of making into Tommy and Tubbo’s room, watching them entangled together like kids at a sleepover. She supposes that’s what they are, even if it is every night. Tommy will be softly snoring, Tubbo will be curled up underneath the blankets so only his hair sticks out. 

She thinks of how she longs for a friendship such as theirs. Thinks of how they seem to smile so much brighter when they are near each other, how they always seem to be touching, whether that’s leaning against one another or play fighting one another, or even clinging to each other in fierce hugs that Niki catches glimpses of when she sees them together. She often thinks those two boys have their own little world, away from the hustle of everything else. A place where they are children, not soldiers. She thinks it must be a wonderful little world they have together.

She thinks of Fundy. Of how he seems so shy, a quiet child who keeps to himself. But he is so much more. He is wonderful, truly. Full of kindness and of knowledge, smart for his age and mature as well. Although she supposes that maturity comes naturally when you grow up in war times. She misses watching him talking to the insects that he would find around the house or the area. Misses watching him smell flowers of run across the lawn in his ill-fitting uniform, his carefree laughter ringing out across the entire estate. 

She misses Eret, how he smiled whenever he used to catch her eye. How he helped her make tea whenever he had the chance to. How he dressed and his voice, suited so well to telling stories. His voice helped put Fundy to sleep, could make even Tommy feel calm and safe. Soothing, like warm milk on a stormy night, deep and vast and so oddly comforting.

She misses the house itself, the hallways lined with paintings, the walls that seemed to hold her, keep her sage and warm. She misses sunsets by the wisteria tree, watching purple blossoms spiral downwards around her. She misses the kitchen, always filled with the scent of something fresh and delicious even when no one had been cooking. She misses standing on her balcony late in the evening, watching the distant city lights as they shone, the smell of moonflowers as the nighttime breeze coiled around her and tousled her hair, tickling her face like flower petals would.

She even misses her dreams. She misses sitting under a shimmering sky watching multicolored stars sparkle above her head. She misses the soft music playing quietly, filling the air with a sense of gentle whimsy. She misses dreaming of him sitting next to her, talking about nonsense that only she cared about. Now all she has are nightmares, turning her dream friend against her under an empty sky, dark storm could all around her as thunder crashes down. 

She misses L’Manburg more than she ever thought she would.

She realizes that Karl is still talking, and she absentmindedly half listens to him rant about his friends. Karl reminds her of herself, in an odd way. He cooks and cleans but doesn’t fight, just like her. He’s quiet and sweet, always helpful and she knows he worries about his friends in the same way that Niki does. 

“So George and Dream keep fighting about who loves who more and they’ve somehow turned caring about each other into a competition. They keep doing things for each other, but they’re only doing it to prove which of them is more willing to do anything for the other. Anyway, I tried to tell them that they probably love each other equally and they yelled at me. Dream called me a communist...” Karl complains. Niki is like a void for him to scream into when he’s frustrated. She doesn’t mind, though; it’s nice to hear something about civilization outside her cell and her nightmares (which are the only places she has any access to). She almost laughs at the communist part, wondering if Dream even knows what communism is.

Sure, if there’s one person she hates: it’s Dream. He kidnapped her, is holding her hostage and won’t even let her have any entertainment aside from Karl’s stories, but Karl manages to make even that monster sound endearing; sweet, even. It’s upsetting.

She picks at her corn with her wooden fork while she listens to Karl complain about his idiotic friends. She eats a little of it, still mostly fiddling with the meal using her fork. It tastes like corn. 

Eventually Karl runs out of things to whine about so he leaves, though she knows he’ll be back with more stories tomorrow. Never a dull moment with the Dream Team, as they call themselves. She sighs loudly as she slowly finishes her meal.

She realizes that her food isn’t spiked though, which is a silver lining to her awful situation. She’ll probably stay awake in that case. Not sleeping is the best way to avoid nightmares, she’s found.

~~~

Unfortunately for Niki, she does eventually fall asleep, eyes drifting closed as she is dragged kicking and screaming into a dream she’d much rather not be having. It’s new scenery this time though, which is the first thing she notices.

This time she is not on a rocky outcrop, but a sandy beach. There’s a storm brewing, she can feel it in her bones. The air seems to crackle in anticipation of the lightning that will come with the rain. She’s not wearing shoes, she can feel soft sand between her toes, but underneath that she feels more. The sand feels alive, the thousands of tiny prehistoric shells beneath her feet seems to call out to her, and she can feel the earth shifting. One of those storms, the kind that brings up things that would be better left lost, hidden below the surface, never to be seen. It’s the kind of storm she would have hidden from under her blankets as a child.

She turns around to gauge where she is. She sees black cliffs, steep and dangerous, and if she can crane her neck upwards enough she can see the same outcrop that the first dreams had taken place at. The clouds there are even darker, and the sky that pokes through from behind them is black and starless. 

Schlatt stands in front of her. He looks frankly...awful. His hair is messy, matted against his forehead with sweat and he’s shaking. His tie is gone, long discarded, and his shirt buttons are undone. His face is contorted in worry, he looks stressed. He looks likes he’s in pain, clinging to his right arm and flicking whenever he moves. She realizes that he’s bleeding, crimson drops landing on the white sand and staining his sleeves.

“This is another nightmare,” She says, to fill the silence that hangs thick and heavy in the air between them, “Any second now you’re going to start screaming.” She’s not looking forward to that. She hates when her friends are in pain, when her siblings cried back in her childhood she would always cry with them, even as a newborn baby. It hurt to watch people she cared about in any sort of pain, and though Schlatt wasn’t technically her friend, it did hurt to see him hurt, despite the fact that he probably isn’t real. Probably.

“No, not a nightmare. That wasn’t me.” He says, breaths raggedy as he sucks in air. 

She tilts her head, puzzled. “Is that why we aren’t on the cliffs?” She asks. She’s found that asking him to explain things like the “That wasn’t me” comment only resulted in more confusion all around. 

That’s one of her least favorite things about him. She likes Schlatt, she really does. He’s like an imaginary friend, and seeing him back to normal and without those unsettling horns is really comforting to her. However, he is one cryptic bastard, in her humble opinion. He always says strange out of context things and leaves Niki to try and figure his words out without giving her any explanation. It’s his worst trait, much like Niki’s tendency to overthink things, which is really what fit her kidnapped in the first place. Instead of immediately fighting off Sapnap or screaming, she let herself get stolen away in the night because she was worried that screaming would put her friends in danger (shins wouldn’t have made any sense if that was what happened).

He swallows dryly and nods at her. “You have to get out of that cell. It changes me. Makes that...thing stronger.” Schlatt once again dumps a piece of information that she doesn’t understand on her, expecting her to just magically get what he wants to tell her. Niki is not a violent person, but it makes her want to hit him whenever he does that.

“I can’t, Schlatt. That’s the point of prison cells, that you can’t get out of them.” 

She hears thunder crashing distantly. The storm is raging on nearby. It’a going to reach them soon, she knows. The air around her buzzed and crackles with anticipation. She sees lightning strike the sea not too far from the beach where they’re standing, and the salty wind only grows stronger, more intense around her.

“Well- figure something out! I can’t be here much longer!” He snaps. Niki takes a tiny bit of offense to that; he’s not the one being literally held captive as a political pawn.

“Fine. Calm down...Please.” Niki isn’t good with conflict, unless it’s about things that she really cared about. She prefers to only argue with people she doesn’t like. She considers in one of her worst flaws.

“You- you just need to get home.” He mutters, running his good hand through his greasy hair. Niki glances at his bleeding arm.

“Can I help you bandage that, before the storm reaches us?” She asks. He stares at her, taken aback.

Slowly he moves closer. Like a scared animal, he tiptoes over like the idea of someone helping him is a totally foreign concept. It’s depressing. 

He holds his right arm up. There’s a scratch there, caked in dried blood and still dripping fresh scarlet that stains the sand red. She grabs the bottom of her dress, a pure white silk affair made from soft material that she rubs to form a makeshift bandage to wrap around Schlatt’s wound.

“I can’t disinfect it, I’m sorry. This is the best I can do for the moment.” She says, smiling apologetically at him. He returns her smile, uncertainty carved into his features.

“NikI, you do know that I’m not technically real, right? I mean- I used to be, but that’s not the point. The point is that only real things get infections.” 

“Do they? I was worried for a moment there.” She says. This dream is much different from any other she’s ever had. It’s not a nightmare but is isn’t quite nice. It’s like her days in L‘Manburg. Pleasant, but not secure. It was temporarily safe at best, and they were constantly under the threat of horrible and painful deaths in battle. 

A fat raindrop lands on her face, sliding down her cheek. It almost stings. More drops follow it, hitting the sand and soaking both her and Schlatt. Soon she’s shivering, the cold water soaking through her clothes. 

She watches the distant, but much closer, lightning. It creates something resembling beauty, a light show in electric blue that cracks open the heavens in her dreams. She and Schlatt stand there in the pouring rain, letting it ruin their clothes for no reason other than to feel alive. It feels like hours that they stand there in silence, and soon she is pulled (nay, yanked) quite suddenly back into consciousness against her will, similar to how she fell asleep in the first place.

~~~

She startles awake, her eyes cracking open the instant that she wakes up. The door is openings light is streaming on fro my here. Above her stands a man in a mask that shockingly isn’t Dream.

It’s Technoblade.

She has to do a double take to make sure that it’s him, but she’d recognize that bone mask and shining golden crown anywhere.

“Wakey wakey, sunshine. We’re doing a quick little jailbreak.” He says sarcastically. He sounds tired.

Niki scrambles to her feet, still in a bit of a trance, both from sleepiness and shock. She realizes that she probably looks a mess, her hair hasn’t been brushed in days and she hasn’t had a bath since she got here. Her clothes are probably raggedy too.

“I’m so very sorry! I must look- just awful.” She stutters nervously, though even she isn’t quite sure why she’s worried about her appearance of all things. She thinks it probably has something to do with a saying her mother taught her when she was seven years old, “A lady is never underdressed in front of a man, my darling.” She’d never understood it as a child. Niki. Ihachu was many things, but she was not a lady. She was a girl who could bite a boy so hard that he bled if he was rude to her little brother then, and she was a woman who could kill a man but wouldn’t now, but she was no lady. She still listened when her mother said it, always dressing nicely more out of respect for her mother than anything else.

“What do you- Never mind, just come with me.” He says. His voice remains totally monotonous, which Niki finds a bit unsettling, but she isn’t one to judge. 

I’m the end, he practically drags her out her call, her groggy and uncertain steps much too slow for him. He leads her through unfamiliar hallways, lit by torches on the the walls that bathe the corridors in a meek yellow glow. Niki is far too tired to keep up with all the twists and turns they make, her brain too occupied with struggling to comprehend the situation as a whole for now. 

At some point they end up in the arena she could see from her window. It’s sandy, and the ground scrapes against her bare feet. He leads her further from the arena, off in a direction she doesn’t bother to remember, quickly yet quietly. They come to a wall that Niki is not tall enough, nor strong enough, to climb.

Techno solves this problem by fluidly picking her up in one motion and then throwing her over the wall. Niki doesn’t even have time to shout, so she lets out a sort of surprised squeak. She expects to hit the cold hard ground, and shuts her eyes in anticipation for the few seconds that she’s falling.

She does not hit the ground. She instead hits a human, landing on top of the unsuspecting person and crushing them under the sudden weight. She immediately scrambles away, afraid that her unfortunate victim was injured. They groan at her.

Once her eyes adjust to the darkness, she realizes that the unknown person is in fact not unknown at all. It’s Wilbur, face down on the ground and making pained noises at her. 

Before she can properly apologize, or even say anything, Technoblade jumps over the wall that he threw her over and lands beside her with a grunt. He shakes himself off, in an almost animalistic way.

She looks back and forth from Wilbur, who has just got up, to Techno, who is glaring at her several times, tears welling up in her eyes from a mixture of relief and shock. They fill her eyes, giving her no chance to stop her emotions from spilling over and running down in her face in wet tracks as she lets out a choked sob.

The two men look at one another and then back at her. Technoblade glares at her, though it’s a lot less of an angry glare. Wilbur opens his mouth, then closes it again. He can’t think of anything to say.

So there she is, on her knees outside the walls of her mortal enemies’ home base, crying her eyes out on the moonlit grass that burns her knees from sitting down too hard. It makes her itch, but she’s too busy sobbing to care right now. Tears roll down her cheeks and land on the ground, wetting the grass like dewdrops at sunrise would.

“Niki?” Wilbur says cautiously. His voice is soft and gentle, as though he’s trying not to scare her.

She can’t even respond, her words getting stuck in her throat and coming out as something akin to whimpering. A frail noise, it makes her feel as though a breeze could knock we over right now. She wants to say something, but her words seem to float away even as she reaches for something to say, desperately trying to explain.

He comes closer, slowly, as though approaching a wounded animal. When she doesn’t do anything to push him away, he sits down in front of her, bending his knees. He reaches for her, and she leans closer, seeking the warmth and validation and affection she’s been missing for much longer than would like to admit. She’s touch starved, tired, in shock and she was just kidnapped and promptly rescued. It’s a stressful time for her, and she’s much too exhausted to hold back.

He brushes the stray hairs from her face and cups her cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Niki,” He says softly, “We shouldn’t have let them take you. I’m so sorry, love.” She ignores how being called love makes her feel, and instead focuses on how pleasant and soothing Will’s voice is. She’s always thought he sounded...kind. Soft, like lace and silk, sweet like macarons.His voice makes her think of cloudy days, curled up in blankets, sleeping in ‘til two in the afternoon and waking up to breakfast in bed. It’s not easy to describe, but that’s what his voice makes her feel.

He pulls her close, gently, wraps his arms around her and gives her the best hug she’s ever had. Warmth hits her skin and she feels safer than she has in weeks, the comfortable silence spreading out around them in a wave of softness, like linen bedsheets. 

~~~ 

He takes her home that night. Him and Techno wait for her to calm down, and then the three of them walk out across a field she doesn’t recognize, tall grass nearly blocking her view but posing no threat to her much taller companions, who lead her across it with ease. 

After a few minutes of walking, they reach the end of the grass and find themselves beside a road. Will sits down on a box he found by the roadside. Techno leans against Wilbur, possibly pretending that he’s taller than him, which Niki can say she has done before, so she can’t judge him for it.

Eventually the most rickety cart in the history of everything, possibly, rolls up next to them. Someone with awful posture in a hooded robe sits at the front of it, a very plain looking cow pulls the rickety thing. It has a tag that says HENRY on it’s neck and it looks at Niki with its nostrils. Uncanny how much cows’ nostrils look like eyes, she thinks, before being scooped up by Wilbur and placed on the cart.

The hooded, hunched over figure turns out to be Tommy with Tubbo clinging on to his back like a tumor. She hugs the two boys, almost starting to cry all over again, but she manages to stop herself this time.

Then they go home, in a rickety old cart pulled by a cow and driven by two teenagers in a really big coat. 

It feels like she’s back home already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it!
> 
> Please make sure to have a drink of water and some food today and I hope you sleep well whenever you go to bed :)
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope to see you for the rest of the chapters


	6. Chamomile and Lavender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niki finds herself back under the wisteria, back in the White House. 
> 
> But something is different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lads, ladies and lovelies! It took me a really long time to write this, because I was honestly struggling with ideas. Luckily I found inspiration in music, as people often do, and now here we are! This chapter is especially important to me, so I hope you enjoy!

The cart journey is uneventful. Niki finds that quite pleasant, having had enough excitement in the last month to last her a lifetime.

She is dimly aware that she’s leaning against someone. Glancing over, she discovers that it’s Will, his arms hanging limply around her. Keeping her grounded, holding her in place, stopping her from vanishing again.

She’s too tired to hear his rapid heartbeat or see his reddened cheeks, but she smiles up at him and closes her eyes. Niki falls asleep like that, wondering how it could be possible to be this comfortable when the cart is shaking so much.

She doesn’t dream. There are no crashing waves, no sandy beach during a storm. There is no wisteria tree, raining blossoms down around her, no blanket of starlight with ever-shifting colours shimmering above her. There is simply sleep. Warm and cold and empty. Everything she needs right now. Perhaps this is a little chance to rest, because even in her dreams she’s usually tired.  
~

When she wakes up again, she’s in a bed. Her bed. The feeling is refreshing to an extent she hadn’t quite expected.

For a moment she simply feels the covers around her, taking in the homeliness. She breathes in the air of her bedroom, slightly musty, though she loves it nonetheless.

Niki shifts, turning over onto her back, opening her eyes lazily. She glances briefly and the first thing she notices is that she’s not alone, as she had previously thought. 

There’s a man standing by her dresser, humming and tidying up. His hair is blonde, almost like Tommy’s but slightly paler, and he’s dressed in green. 

He’s wearing a hat, the sort of hat that isn’t quite ugly but is certainly not the peak of fashion. It has stripes.

She rubs her eyes, yawning softly as she sits up in bed. The man turns around to face her, his expression one of gentleness.

The second she sees his face Niki knows exactly who he is. He has Tommy’s blue eyes and Wilbur’s floppy hair, though his is much straighter, and quite a bit longer. She knows she’s seen him before, and after a few seconds of awkward silence it clicks.

“You’re their father. I’ve seen you in the paintings down the hall.” She says, more to confirm it to herself than to inform him of anything.

“Indeed I am, young lady. My name is Phil, and you’ve met my sons, I assume. I’m their father, and you’re Miss Nikita Nihachu. Wilbur mentions you a lot in his letters. He told me you were pretty,” Niki’s face flushes at that - does Will think she’s pretty?-“but I wasn’t quite expecting you to be this pretty. And you must be quite strong too, surviving on your own under Dream’s imprisonment.”

“T-thank you, sir, but I’m not all that...” she manages to stutter out her response, a little preoccupied with the thought of Wilbur writing about her, “Will’s told me a little bit about you. He said you were kind, and I’m quickly finding that to be true.”

Phil smiles at her. His face seems perfectly suited to it, gentle features coming together in a pleasantly calm expression. She pulls herself from the covers, the sensation of being wrapped in pleasant warmth fading slowly. Phil has the sort of face that’s meant for a father. Gentle and kind and loving, nothing like her own father, who was stoic and hardened and reminded her of solid rock. 

Her father was little more than a brick wall who occasionally showed flickers of humanity, late at night when he kissed her goodnight. Phil is nothing like that, but he is everything she wanted from her father as a child.

She realizes that someone must have changed her clothes while she slept, as she’s wearing her own nightgown instead of the dirty clothes she had been stuck in during her stay with Dream.

She steps out of bed slowly, afraid that this whole room might fall away if she moves too quickly, that she’ll wake up to find herself in a cold little cell with a tiny window she can only see when she stands on her tiptoes. Luckily for her, nothing happens when her feet meet the wooden floorboards.

“Phil, what are you doing in my room, by the way? Not to sound rude, of course.” Niki asks. She’s not sure why that would sound rude, considering that it is her room and asking why someone has entered it without her permission is quite a reasonable response.

“I was just tidying up a little before you woke up.” He tells her. She tiptoes over to him to extend her hand.

He shakes it. He smells strongly of something warm and spiced. Warm milk and nutmeg. His hands are rough, and she knows he must’ve worked them raw, like her own father. Phil is not the same kind of hardworking, who smelled of sweat and grime, whose smile she rarely ever saw, but knowing that they have something in common brings her an odd comfort. Maybe he could have been like Phil. Maybe he could have been gentle.

Phil leaves, after they shake hands. He tells her that the boys will be thrilled to see her. She smiles at him as he closes the door behind him. Niki chooses what to wear for the day. She decides that today is a day for the beige dress her mother made her once, when she was small. She had said to Niki that one day it would make her beautiful. At the time, she didn’t understand. She thought it was silly to make a dress for her to wear when she was a grownup.

It wasn’t silly. She loves this dress, the scent of her childhood home is forever trapped in the fabric, and it helps her breathe. It smells like her mother’s love. The dress is plain, but it is pretty and delicate. It makes her feel soft, like how her mother was.

When she’s dressed, she picks up a hairbrush and combs out the knots that had formed in her hair until it’s smooth and neat again. She puts her hair up into a half bun, twirls in front of the mirror and steps out of her bedroom.

~

The hallway feels warmer. More inviting, Niki finds herself feeling proud as she scans it, noting the lack of dust.

She takes in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the house. It smells fresh and clean, like something close to citrus. It soothes her.

She takes her time descending from the staircase, making sure to remember every creak, every little strain of the wood. She burns every detail of this house into her memory, so that even when her eyes are closed she can tell exactly where she is from the image behind her closed eyelids.

When she gets to the kitchen she is met with a sight she’s rather unfamiliar with. It’s cleaner than how she left it. At the table sit the three youngest members of L’Manburg Government. All three immediately stand up when they see her, fixing their messy hair and picking at the dirt under their nails.

“1...2...3...” Tommy whispers aside to the others, as if she won’t hear him if he’s quiet.

“W-welcome back, Niki!” All three of them chorus. It’s not exactly right, Tommy seems to think that if he shouts his words they’ll somehow sound more organised. Tubbo and Fundy both stumble over their words, and they all look rather silly with their hastily slicked back hair and nervous grins. Niki laughs. She can’t help it, they just look so awkward.

“What on Earth are you boys doing?” She pants between loud chuckles.

“Tommy‘s Dad-“, Tubbo begins, before Tommy elbows him, “- I mean, Philza Minecra-“, It’s Fundy who elbows him this time, “- I mean Phil, told us that we should give you a warm welcome home and then he made us do our hair like this.” Tubbo finally manages to finish his sentence without being harassed.

“Yeah! Dad said we have clean up our act, ‘cos you’re so nice to us.”, Tommy informs her, “He says that we must be thankful for your ass-ist-ance” The way he says assistance is quite odd, Niki thinks.

“Yeah! He says that we have to be thankful!” Fundy chimes in helpfully. Niki nods thoughtfully. 

“Well, it’s very nice of you three.” Niki beams at them, ruffling their hair and pulling each of them into a long, affectionate hug. 

The boys grin up at her proudly, as if having Niki commend their efforts is the highest of honours. Tommy begins attempting to get his hair back into its usual state, and the other two soon follow suit. She hears footsteps behind her and turns around to face Eret. 

“Niki!” He says excitedly, scooping her into a hug “Welcome home!” 

She chuckles loudly again. Today it seems her lungs are full of laughter. 

When Eret releases her from his grip, she’s almost out of breath from how tight he was holding. She spares a glance outside the window by the counter. 

Outside she sees the familiar grassy hills and towering spruce trees. The walls of the White House stand tall and proud, miniature replicas of the city’s barriers poking out from behind the tree line, and far out there she can see a small stream she’s never bothered to follow. She wants to now, wants to find whatever river or lake it comes from. 

She can’t see the wisteria tree (which is on the other side of the house), but she can see Technoblade, sharpening his sword on a particularly large rock. She wrestles away from Eret and the boys, determined to thank the Blade for his help in getting her away from Dream and his lackeys.

She thinks suddenly of Karl and his innocent eyes, waltzing into her cell in multicolored shirts and telling her about his day. She’ll miss him, she supposes. Had he been allied with anyone else in the world, perhaps they could have been friends. She ponders that thought as she steps into the sunshine. 

The air smells sweet and crisp, the scent of the trees mixing with the sweet smell of summer. Clouds like fluffy cotton balls litter the sky, and the sun shines bright and yellow on a pale blue background. She listens to the birdsong. Niki finds herself walking carefully, though she can’t pinpoint why.

Techno isn’t far from the house, only a few metres away. She can hear the sound of his sword grating against the rock. When she’s close enough to talk without raising her voice she stops walking.

“...Mornin’...” He grunts. His voice is rough. Niki thinks that if a flood could speak, it would sound the way he does. 

“Morning.” Niki greets slowly. 

“You sleep okay?” He asks, pausing his work to turn to her. He isn’t wearing his famous royal cape, he doesn’t even have his crown. He stands up, wearing a simple sweat-stained shirt and a pair of brown pants. He extends his hand to her. His hair is tied into a bun on top of his head.

“I slept fine.” She says and shakes it. His skin is rough. Rough like his voice.

“Good, good.”, He pauses, “...I never introduced myself. I’m assuming you already know, but I’m Technoblade. Will and Tommy’s brother. You can call me Techno, if you feel like it. Nice to meet you”

“Nikita Nihachu. Everyone calls me Niki. It’s a pleasure.” She says. They’re both nervous. She can feel it in the air. 

He nods, awkwardly. The whole situation seems absurd. Silence envelopes them, but it feels strained.

“I actually came out here to say thank you.” Niki mentions casually, or at least she tries to make it sound casual. “So...Thanks for coming to, um- rescue me.”

“Don’t sweat it. I only came ‘cause Will asked me to...You should be thanking him.” He says gruffly. She’s silent for a moment.

“Speaking of Wilbur, I haven’t seen him. Do you know where he is?” She asks.

“Yeah. He went to that tree of his, the one with the plaque. Said he needed time to think.” Techno says

“Thanks,” she says, “It was nice talking to you.”

He nods, and with that, she goes off to find Wilbur.

~

It doesn’t take long to get to the tree. As soon as she rounds the corner of the house it comes into view, petals falling gracefully, carried by the breeze. Will stands underneath it. Even from this far she can see him tracing the faded plaque, running his hands over the lettering. She doesn’t call out to him. It would feel like she was interrupting if she did. 

Instead, she approaches the tree slowly, allowing the scent of the blossoms to fill her nostrils. When she’s still a few metres away he turns to look at her. There’s something in his expression she’s never seen before. A kind of sadness, a melancholy glint in his eyes. Then his face changes, back to his normal tired look.

When she finally reaches him, she stands right beside him. Staring at the plaque, at his fingers tracing it. His hands are delicate, long and slender. They are not made for war. Her mother would have called them piano hands, meant for music. She can see scars on them. Will has a lot of scars, Niki knows. It comes with the fighting, she supposes.

“...Hi.” He says softly. His voice is like wind.

“...Hey.” She responds, just as quietly.

She reads the words engraved onto the plaque over and over. Her hand reaches up to touch it. It looks so small next to Wilbur’s.

“I was worried about you.” He murmurs, not looking away from the tree.

“Yeah. I missed you.” Niki whispers back. Their hands are almost touching. She wants to bring them together, to feel connected to another person. She doesn’t move though, because what if he moves away from her? What if he recoils at her touch?

“...I’m glad we got you home. I thought you were gone.” She doesn’t know why they’re whispering. Maybe because this conversation is something that should be kept secret, or maybe to stop their words being stolen away by the breeze, floating away to other’s ears.

“I’m glad to be home.” In her head all she wants is to hug him, to bury her face in his chest and breathe in deeply.

The wind blows. Her hair moves with it, flowing like the leaves on the wisteria. The breeze smells of something quiet and sweet, something almost like moonflowers that mixes with the wisteria scent. Her one hand hangs limp at her side as the other traces the words on the cold metal plaque, mirroring Wilbur.

She hears the sound of fabric shifting and suddenly his hand isn’t hanging by his side because it’s on hers. She turns to look at his face, but his eyes are on the tree.

“I knew him. The person it’s dedicated to.” Will says. Niki nods slowly.

“Did you know the person who put up the plaque?”

“Yeah. I’m the one who did it. Seemed wrong that I would be the only one to remember him.”

She doesn’t know why it’s so shocking to learn this. He’s always at the tree, looking at the words. Now she knows it’s because he put them there. 

“What was he like?” She asks slowly.

“He was loud, and he liked shouting at people. He swore a lot, too. And he got angry easily, but he was kind to me. When we were kids he used to fight the people who annoyed us.”, Wilbur laughs sadly, “He was my best friend.”

Niki squeezes his hand. She closes her eyes and lets herself imagine this mystery friend. He seems like the scruffy type, messy hair he never combed, shirt buttons always left undone. Silence fills the air. The silence of so many questions she’s never going to ask.

She lets the silence wash over her like a wave. She allows herself to float in the quiet calm, the only thing grounding her is the feel of the cold metal under her fingertips and the warmth of Will’s hand.

After a long while (She doesn’t know how long, but it feels like ages), he speaks.

“I missed you too.” There are layers behind the words. The sentence is simple but it is filled with so many meanings, so many words he hasn’t said.

She opens her eyes and look beside her. He’s watching her, brown eyes analysing her like she’s an open book, pages flipping from the mere force of his stare.

She turns so that they’re facing each other. Niki returns his stare. Her eyes are brown too, the kind of brown that feels like autumn. The kind of brown that comes from green and gold mixed together just enough to make a new colour, flecks of both colours glittering at him.

Niki hugs him, quite suddenly. She inhales deeply, her face buried in his chest. He smells floral and soothing, like lavender and chamomile and honey. He smells like the tea Niki makes to help him fall asleep, she realizes. Her heart swells and she finds herself grinning like a kid with a new toy.

She feels his arms wrap around her, slow and deliberate. He leans down, his face in her hair. 

“Hey...” She whispers into his shirt. She wonders if he even heard her.

“Hey.” He whispers back. 

She’s not sure how she feels about him, to be honest. She loves him, she knows that much, but the rest is hard to discern. Does she love him the way she loves her family? Or the way that she loves Tommy and Tubbo and Fundy? No. She loves him in a brand new way that’s just for the two of them. Whether or not that means romance doesn’t concern her.

~

That night when the day is done she decides to have a bath. A long one, to make up for lost time.

She fills the tub with bubbles and floral-scented soaps and colourful things in bottles with curly font and words like “satin” and “refreshing” and “rejuvenating” on them.

While she’s soaking in the hot water she thinks. Reflects, you could say. She thinks about what it was like being imprisoned, thinks about the man in her dreams. She thinks about Wilbur and and tree and the friend it’s dedicated to. She wonders what else he hasn’t told her, wonders what kind of person Wilbur was before she met him.

And then she hears it. Humming. She can’t determine where it’s coming from, but she knows the tune. It’s the one from her dreams. She knows it well.

She can’t tell if it’s coming from right next to her or somewhere outside. It’s like it’s coming from everywhere around her, without actually having a source.

It scares her, a little bit. Is she imagining it? She must be. She’s imagining it. She has to be. It wouldn’t make sense for the song to be here. It comes from her dreams. She must be sleeping, she decides- or at least falling asleep.

She takes a deep breath. And then another. And then she hums along. She hopes that doing so will make it stop, or wake her up, or- She’s not actually sure what she’s hoping for, honestly.

Suddenly the song stops. She wonders why for a moment until she realizes that there’s a new sound. Footsteps. One of her many housemates, she assumes.

One step, two step, three step, four. She counts them, though she’s not quite sure why. Her eyes are shut, and the water is hot, nearly burning. The footsteps continue all the way up to ten, then they stop outside the bathroom door.

She hasn’t stopped humming, she realizes. Then comes a knock. One, two; she counts. 

“Hm?” She pauses her song.

“Niki...How do you know that song?” It’s Will that’s outside. His voice is shaky, like he’s nervous. Almost...scared.

How is she meant to respond to that? She can’t just say she hears it in her dreams, she can’t tell him that it plays every night when she falls asleep. For the first time she wonders where it even came from. Did her subconscious make it up? Did she hear it somewhere? 

“I-I made it up” she stutters, sounding totally unconvinced. She doesn’t even believe herself, and she’s never been good at lying. Not a good combination, that’s for certain. 

“...That’s impossible.” Wilbur says, he sounds even more worried. His voice trembles, muffled by the locked door. 

“I wrote that song for my friend”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, please remember to drink some water and eat today, and don’t forget to take a break if you need it!

**Author's Note:**

> Also: there will be some Niki/Wilbur, because neither of them is uncomfortable with shipping, Niki has explained that she’s only really upset when people try and ask about their private lives and Wilbur is fine with anything that isn’t stalker behavior (if they state otherwise, that subplot will be totally removed)


End file.
